I spent way too much time trying to figure this out.
My MacBook is connected to a VPN. iPhone is not. iPhone recognizes MacBook and tries to send a file. MacBook doesn’t recognize the iPhone in the Airdrop screen and will not receive the file. Turned off VPN and it worked. It also applies vice versa.
I don’t know if this is common knowledge but I couldn’t find it through any of the search results. Hope it helps someone else.
If said VPN is windscribe, you can turn firewall off on their menu bar menu and boom! airdrop works again.
My iPhone is connected to a VPN and my MacBook is not, but AirDrop works just perfectly fine.
I had the same experience with several VPN services in the past. For several months now it seems that at least NordVPN has found a fix because I didn’t have any issues with them anymore. No idea if it’s something on Apple’s side or the developer side of coding, but it got better.
Cisco never works with AirDrop for me (or related features such as AirPlay, Universal Keyboard, etc.). Thanks to this Stack Exchange answer, I checked out Mullvad VPN. It’s certainly not the most popular VPN brand, but if you turn on the “Local Network Sharing” setting in its MacOS app, oh boy, it works like a charm.
All the continuity features you expect to see without a VPN are still functional with Mullvad VPN turned on on your Mac, iPhone & iPad. Plus, it only costs about $5/month. The app is clean and fast. Has lots of server locations in 50-ish countries. I just became their user yesterday, but would highly recommend it to users in the Apple ecosystem.
Seems like something Apple would do.
I just updated both my Macbooks (2021 14inch M1 Pro) to Sonoma 14.2.1 and connected my Surfshark VPN. And surprisingly it’s working!
I’ve been waiting for Airdrop to work with VPN for soo… long and it’s finally here. Yay!
Really? Hmm. I wonder if it has something to do with my VPN then. I’ll check the settings and help menu. I use ExpressVPN.
Edit: I tried using split tunnelling to deny certain applications access to the VPN. Disabled (one at a time): Disk Utility, Airport Utility, Bluetooth File Transfer, System Information Finder. It didn’t work. It might be the VPN then.
Ok that’s good to know. So I am not the only one! I wanted to try Nord originally but chose Express. I went for the 6 month option so I can try other ones in the future.
Having the same issue with Nord VPN :^/
not working for me my airdrop never works when connected to PIA on my mac
Ok, for some reason Airdrop doesn’t work with Cisco Anyconnect VPN (I use it for work).
But it does work with Surfshark seamlessly.